


Waterwheels

by inlemoon



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Genre: Gen, Multi, oneshots
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-11
Updated: 2018-05-21
Packaged: 2018-09-16 21:07:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9289562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlemoon/pseuds/inlemoon
Summary: He's never seen so much silver and grime before. Modern Twilight Princess AU. Oneshots. Various ships.





	1. city

**Author's Note:**

> beta'ed by vaegtersang, xoxo

The lobby of Township Station smells like old paper and mildew, and Link flips through an outdated issue of _Caprinology Monthly_ and tries not to peel at the wall. He should have boarded and departed by now, and the longer he stares at the clock the more his heart knocks in his chest. Eyes bleary, feet jittery with caffeine and no small amount of nervousness, he crumples his cup and throws it at the nearest bin, grumbling under his breath when it bounces off the side.

And he normally has such impeccable aim.

His ears prick up--a metallic echo drifts through the tufts of fountain grass,  long and lonesome. It’s miles off and the noises of that incoming thing are still distant but getting closer, a series of whistles and clatters in the otherwise quiet night. He doesn’t even know if it’s the train or his imagination; or, maybe, just another car on the interstate, going too fast as it bypasses Ordon, a tiny torpedo with better places to be.

He clutches his suitcase a little tighter.

\--- 

 The train pulls in sixteen minutes late, headlamp as wide as the moon, and the acrid, citrus-smell smoke of the magicoal engines sting his eyes and throat. The conductor has a Lorulean accent that’s thick as bee-pollen, and Link barely understands the directions to his seat. He makes his way down the first aisle,  and finds himself hesitating when he has to press the button at the end of the car to transfer to the next.

_Why am I so nervous?_

But, he knows. He’s never been any further than Eldin Province, and even then only to a tiny village on the Eldin-Faron border.  The two million people of Castle City lived almost as far north as Labrynna, and in a world completely different from the one he knew. Which was the whole point.

A few weeks back she calls him, and the next morning he picks up the box she’s left out on her porch, and that is that--except not really, and when Talo asks how’s she’s doing before remembering, and when the disappointment is written on Colin’s face and Rusl offers that maybe it’s just like the last two times, Link just shrugs. He’d already found a job and booked the ticket. Oddly, he half-expects to see her there, in coach, a familiar face in a sea of strangers.

She isn’t, of course, nor are any of the others. But there _is_ a gaggle of Bokoblins playing a noisy game of knucklebones, screeching when the ball rolls off the table. To the left of them, Gerudo tourists talk in hushed tones, the hisses of the language audible even as they were quiet. The one empty chair is in the far back, next to a lone Twili woman in a long black dress. 

He jostles her knee as he sits.

“Shit! Sorry, Miss…?”

“Midna. And it’s fine. These seats are cramped.” She pauses, gives him a look that’s a little drawn out. “You’re from pumpkin land, eh? I can tell by your accent. Where you going?”

He blinks rapidly. “I have no idea, really.”

“You don’t know which station you’re getting off at?”

“No, I meant--” She looks bored, he gives a sheepish smile, “--I’m going to Castle City.”

She nods. “Good place, hard to get a proper doughnut but the food truck selection is fucking incredible.” Her eyes, orange and yellow, settle back on whatever she’s reading.  

Curiosity wriggles in. “Ya from there?”

She doesn’t look at him. “No.”

“Live there now?”

A long blue finger slides across the screen of her tablet. “Half the year.”

“Oh.” _How do you live between two places?_ “Where else do you stay?”

“Lorule for the cooler months, in Roi Gemme. Castle City for the hot.”

“Oh, I always heard Roi Gemme was a pretty sight, all those buildings with them shinin’ purple spires--”

“I’m not interested, pumpkin-boy.”

“...huh?”

Her gaze finally flicks up, burns into his. He briefly considers melting.

“You keep asking these _questions,_ and like I said, I’m not _interested_ in--”

“No, I don’t mean that--er, I was just...”

“Then what do you want?”

He exhales and spreads his hands, blood creeping into his cheeks. “I’m moving into Conch Horn the day after tomorrow. And I really ain’t got a clue what it’s like there. Really,” he adds, when she still looks skeptical.

“You could have just mentioned that from the start.” Her eyes lose a little of their sharpness, even as she mutters under her breath--it sounds suspiciously like _Cabris_. “We’ve got twenty more hours, so just...ask me when it’s daylight.”

He glances at the clock hanging on the wall of the back of the car. _3:10._ The light from his seatmate’s tablet is a little too bright. But he’d get some sleep soon--or even if he didn’t, it wasn’t like sleepless nights were somehow new.  The glass is cool against his forehead and out the window, the gray-pink exhaust glows soft.


	2. confluence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He’s been here for months now, but sometimes the sheer crowdedness of the city still takes his breath away.

The corridor widens and Link steps out from under the arch to a waiting train and a rush of freezing air. Above, a split-condenser works at full blast and to no avail. It is forever hot and stuffy in Crystal Street station, though the Purple Line’s platform is at least less dizzyingly _cramped_ than the transfer-tunnel from which he has emerged.

The Tunnel’s busiest station sits at the confluence of the Green and Yellow lines, and their passengers pour into the Purple’s torrent of people. Behind him, a procession of ear-talons and tartan bottoms, fast-food uniforms and button-shirts,  black-laced boots and bandeaus rushes out across the platform in half-jogs and skips to board for concerts on Bean Street or the apartment towers of Gaepora Heights. A guy in a sweater and suspender-held shorts bumps him as he runs on his way, pauses, glares, and runs off again muttering.  Across the tracks, Yellow Line passengers stream out from their own transfer tunnel -- gray suitcoats and houndstooth skirts shuffle onto trains headed for the detached, silent houses of Starpatch and Silver Shore; dress-slacks and tailored vests spring aboard, bound for the bars at Alder Circle. A bell rings, the train flurries, and is gone.

He scans the people again -- up the escalator, across the turnstiles on the south exit, down the opposite escalator, over the opposite platform -- pushing himself up onto his tiptoes in these rather uncomfortable shoes, looking for the familiar bobbing of her head above the crowd, and the drifts of orange hair gleaming bright even in the dim and dark.

He’s been here for months now, but sometimes the sheer crowdedness of the city still takes his breath away.

Not tonight, though. He pulls at his too-tight collar and fights the urge to undo the top  buttons. Tonight, he just wishes the press of the crowd would go away-- and that finding a seven-foot-tall Twili woman was not so bewilderingly excruciating a search.

“Stand to the right.” Someone says behind him.

“Ah, sorry--” He takes a sideways step to the right, near-instinct by now.

Then he pauses. And he turns.

And, in a flash, realizes that the voice is _hers_ \--and that she is in fact an asshole who has been standing behind him for minutes, and that -- if her blackberry-lipsticked smirk is any sign -- she has been enjoying his confusion.

He glares. He tries to make himself look more annoyed than he feels. It doesn’t work at all.

She looks back blithely, appraising him with eyebrow arched. Apparently, she approves.

“You don’t look too bad, _tête de cabri_.”

It occurs to him that he has no idea what the nickname means.

She jerks her head, and the blue-bejeweled brooch in her headpiece glitters. She wears it like a mood, he knows, and he likes how it’s never quite the same  and how it always somehow inscrutably _fits_ her. He follows it as he follows her, through the crowds, pressing forward -- until their train fills up, and the doors close without them, and people are already trickling onto the platform. She makes an irritated and probably offensive gesture.

“Trains come every six minutes,” he offers, but she flicks her hand at him.

“We’re already going to be thirty minutes late. Do you want to walk in at intermission?”

“No, but it’s rude for people to cut in line.”

“Less rude for one?”

His eyes narrow. “ _Midna_.” But sees how her lips tug and even though he’s seen it before, he’s really not used to what she’s about to--

A few heads in the crowd snap when she disappears, then turn back to their business; he feels the weight of her shadow clinging to his nape, soft and cool. His own mouth starts to curl up, until she whispers urgently in his ear-- _if we don’t catch this one, we might as well never._

“Maybe the next one,” he says as the next train screeches in and people swarm the door.

_Uh, no._

So he grunts and cuts in line and jostles forward and the other passengers in the car glare and somewhere behind someone  probably says “ _asshole_ ” none-too-softly, but all he can hear is the trill of her laughing in his ear, a little too loud but welcome all the same. And when her shadow-hand rests on the curve of his neck, a little too intimate for just friends but not intimate enough to warrant these goosebumps, his own mouth is smiling and for the love of all the spirits in Faron, he cannot wipe it off.

They ride in silence at first, but after three stops she pipes up.

_What do you think about that guy over there? One in the pink pants._

“I think that you can’t judge people based solely on appearance.”

_You absolutely can. Everyone here is judging you, for example._

“For what?”

_For talking to yourself._

“Goatshit. Ain’t a soul that cares--”

_Oh, they don’t_ care _, but they_ definitely _notice._ She says it with such glee.

“If you’re noticin’, you’re probably carin’,” he mutters to himself, but much softer, eyes darting around the car as it pulls them forward, a weird screeching thing full of a thousand people. And when she laughs again, and a finger touches (traces?) his ear he wonders if she’s noticed him flushing, and really ( _kinda desperately_ ) hopes that she has.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a/n: “ tête de cabri” means head of goat; if you hear it from an old Cajun’s mouth, it probably means hardheaded. (I heard it often) . and kisses to @vaegtersang, 10/10 beta


	3. papers

She hears her mother’s voice, sometimes.

 _Your great-great-great-great_ (four greats--she remembers counting them every single time, just to make sure she got it right) _grandfather built this empire from the foundation up, and a tower to go with it._

 _He wanted the tallest, indisputably grandest, building in the skyline._ It still was, shining to the point of almost-iridescence over the whole lot of skyscrapers, over the dark shimmers of the Sheikah Tower and the turquoise Raefin and (with particular satisfaction as of late) Pinnacle Power’s yellow dome. Or, well, it _was_ immune--  the cosmetic enchantments had inscrutably wavered in the past year or so. _It almost looks like all the others,_ Ashei joked to her recently. 

Bullshit. The spire was _objectively_ the most distinct, and even with its current dirt, she still thought it was the prettiest.

Zelda's hand hovers over the phone, rests on the purple plastic for a moment before picking it up. The call is brief; the surprise in her assistant’s voice creeps through the line. It’s been ages since she’s cancelled a whole day--her vacations are, most of the time, planned out long in advance.

She packs up her documents, buckling the  strap on the inside of her briefcase, tucking her work phone and its charger into the corner before turning it off. She grabs her purse, pulls the folded papers back out and spreads them flat,  stares down and, in a fit of--not rage, exactly, but certainly a fit of _something_ \--flings them across the room. Or, well, _tries_ to fling them--mostly they just scatter and drift down like little asshole snowflakes, too delicate for their contents, too slow to touch the ground.

One breath. Two. Three. She looks out at the view she once considered spectacular, her stomach empty and knotted. The windows shimmer  blue and green.

She takes her time to come down from her office. Her driver is waiting, exhaust billowing from the back of the car; she tips him and tells him to go home. His eyebrow raise and the the question of if she’s okay is clearly sitting on his lips; she is grateful when he does not ask.

~~~

She turns left at the end of the skybridge, refusing to slow her clip even at the wind’s cuts and blows. Castle City’s winters were brutal and beautiful, silver with sleet and gray with grime; from the feel of the air, a blizzard was going to start soon.  She pulls her wallet from her pocket, and in a fluid motion presses it against the faregate, striding forward and --

\-- recoiling unsteadily when she bumps against the turnstile. She presses it down again to no result.

  _Fuck._

She must’ve thrown her farecard away last year. Thankfully, blessedly, no one is behind her. 

Her feet snap whiplike against the concrete  on her way to the fare machine, and with frigid-fumbling fingers she rams the the buttons until it spits out a new one. An Orange line train to Adderbend rushes overhead and she weighs her options. She could go to a bar and find someone, or just board the next one and stay on forever and die, riding the lines until she collapsed of thirst or hunger or heartbreak. Whichever came first.

This time last year, winter was warm--shimmering in red and gold, like his hair and eyes, and he was laughing, face glowing a bit from the lights she’d strung up that afternoon. And when his hot hands gripped the backs of her thighs, she felt equal parts fire and dishonesty with him inside of her, and when she came she stared at him boldly but bit her lip for a different reason, and the worst part about all of it was that deep down, she didn’t really feel like she made a mistake. It was a shitty way of ending it, yeah. But at least it ended it and besides, how the fuck do you end something after you’d stupidly promised forever?

The train glides into Snakepeel station, and her phone lights up with Ashei’s text.

_There’s an arctic exploration exhibit at the Rhalite. They have half a room dedicated to covering You-Know-What, albeit only as “folklore.” And they don’t really mention any of the recent evidence from satellite photography. But it’s good enough if you’re just a beginner or hobbyist._

_I’ll keep it in mind!_  she replies, not keeping it in mind.

 _Be safe out there_ is the response, and Zelda rolls her eyes and almost regrets humoring her friend’s Yeti conspiracies. She yanks the cowl of her coat up tight as the train creeps forward, violet eyes peering out at the veil of snow.

 _Goddesses_.

It would become a sludge of black and gray once it hit the ground, she knew, but for those first moments, it really was breathtaking.

~~~

In the middle of Vaiville, buried in an annex to the  Spirit Temple and nearly invisible, was a tiny bakery she’d found when she was just a subway baby, a kid of the city with too much time and not enough friends. There was a way the air smelled that welcomed her, all chicory and soggy trash and blackmoss. She had adored the paper-wrapped date rolls, and  crammed  nutmeg-dusted pastries into her mouth by the half-dozen, but her favorite had been the tiny sparkling bottles of milk--served cold, but which warmed her just the same, and always worth the ride.  

The last time she went, her eyes ran over the knickknacks lining the thin bottom of the display case, colorful behind curved glass, landing on the corner on the etched-in _Hyrex_. It shouldn’t have surprised her; the whole city glittered with it, even in those tucked away and hidden parts that almost made you forget. And as she runs off the Orange, legs leading independent of a brain snarled with lost-love traffic, it occurs to her that she never took him there.

It also occurs to her that taking the subway around the city will fix exactly zero of her problems, that she could instead choose to go back and talk but she is so _tired_ of apologizing so here she is, transferring to the Purple Line in the middle of a snowstorm, mentally reciting the stops she has not yet passed through until she can find something-- _anything_ \--of who she was before.

The train breaks from the tunnel and she sees another view she has forgotten, the gray-glister lines of Hyrex Glass Inc. and the golden stonework of Pinnacle Power, Oil, and Electric,  hers and his, his and hers, meant to sit on opposite sides of the skyline or quite possibly the world.

“I loved you,” she says aloud. “I really did.”

 

~~~ 

It’s 2:45 in the morning and all the lights and smells of downtown and uptown and all-around-town diffuse through her apartment, barely-there yellows and oranges and whites landing softly on the sharp dark, the fragrance of rubber and magicoal clinging still to her hair and skin and clothes.  When she looks out, she sees thousands of office windows of people still working, some of them fulfilled and some of them empty, some of them fucking people besides their husbands and some of them probably happy.

Two nutmeg-dusted pastries left in the box they’d given her, she reaches in for another and admits that it is a promising concept.

~~~~~

_Zelink Bonus:_

_Harpstring_. Two people exit, a mom and her son. 

 _Lanayru Square._ A young woman with a chicken under her arm, which in retrospect was the most interesting thing in the train car, leaves in a flurry of clucks and feathers.

 _Chinstrap_ and then _Pivioine Gardens_ and they’re the only people left, and by this point she knows that he’s noticed her too by the way his head turns and lingers too long, and maybe-- 

_I could swear that I know you._

“Hi.”

“Hello.”

“Have we met?”

“I don’t know.”

And it’s not the first time she’s had the feeling, that little ancient nagging at the back of her head, and she decides that she’ll talk to him, if he wants to talk back--and if he isn’t an asshole, which is entirely possible.

“I’m Link, I work for the Urban Garden Commission?”

Maybe that was where. Hyrex had a garden and a few interiorscapes--lovingly tended in the summer, actually, thickets of trellised moonflower perfuming the roof.

“I’m Zelda, I’m--” Yeah, she wasn’t in the mood to out herself and if he didn’t recognize her then that was just fine: “--I work downtown.”

“Maybe I’ve seen you there?” She tried not to smirk--even if they’d crossed paths on the sidewalk, it wasn’t like he’d remember her with all the people, but he had an accent thick as grits and clearly wasn’t from around here.

“I doubt it, but it’s nice to see you now.” And she grins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Zelda is CEO of Hyrex Glass Inc. Beta'ed by vaegtersang.


	4. frustration

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There were sidewalks and subways and bridges and buses; she knows them better, but for the time being he takes them alone.

There’s a way she kisses his neck, and it’s intoxicating, fearless; there’s a way her hands run up his belly and to his chest and down his arms, never letting up, relentless, warm; gorgeous, honestly, in the way they eventually entwine with his own fingers. And he’ll trace his own palms up the backs of her thighs and ass and back until he’ll tangle himself into her.

The love songs tell him she’s supposed to taste like persimmons or plums or papayas or some shit like that but mostly she tastes like salt, smells like her perfume and perspiration, looks like she’s always looked to him (lovely, smug) if not a little more unguarded, eyeliner a bit smudged  
(...though he’ll admit, grudgingly, the way her orange-gold hair looks when it catches the light is faintly crown-like...)

The first time they fuck he cannot hold back and spills inside of her quickly. But he makes her come with his mouth shortly after, and he is sure that once he knows her well enough they’ll figure it out together. He rests his head against her chest and listens to the rhythm there, and the smile in her voice when she says his name.

 ~~~

It is midnight on a Friday, and Link is frustrated. Frustrated in the way flickering street lights that can’t quite stay on are frustrated, or how the moths that decide to slam against them are probably frustrated as they burn and fizzle and fall. Frustrated because there is a stretch of sidewalk with wide-white circles from the streetlamps, because the entire city is bathed in silver light that shimmers in his vision, and it is breathtaking and it is movement and it is huge and hungry and alive.

Between each circle is a glorious dark shadow where Midna does not lurk--will not fold into shade and cling to his shoulders, or bite his lobe and grin at his shivers, will not rest a hand on the crook of his neck, will not emerge later with her hand still there, will not pull him forward and press black-or-berry lips to his, will not be here to walk this sidewalk with him, will not do whatever weird bewitching thing she does.

 

And what’s really the point of a sidewalk if he doesn’t walk it with her. What’s really the fucking point.

Except, there is a city and it is made of moons, it is calling him by name, it is some lonesome-howl filled with things like him; he wondered if she’d ever know how he changed, how he used to sleep at night and how all the heartbreak he knew before he met her turned him into something else. How what she loved was a new and tarry-black creature. How it made sense that she would be three thousand miles away for the next six long months, because he didn’t know his new starry self, because if she belonged to shadow then he certainly belonged to her dark.

_Three-thousand miles. Six months. I love you. I love you. Six months. I love you. Six months._

He breathes out. Steps forward.


	5. smoke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first time she left as a runaway princess, crying for four hours of the ride then drinking too much vodka and turning into a sour-lemon bitch for most of the rest of it, seething over every little thing she’d experienced in the time before she left. Now, she thinks of nothing, sits straight amidst the smoke in her cracked-leather seat, a star-crowned rail-queen flying through her thousand cities.

 

Midna watches the silver of the city shine then shimmer then disappear. She decides that she  doesn't care. She decides that she will care later. She decides that  six months from today, from this very moment where she’s departing on the _Capital Flyer,_ so desperately indifferent to leaving, she will have sorted out whatever was not bothering her at the moment, or _who_ ever was not  bothering her at the moment.

She pulls the window screen back down and  is firm in her apathy. Her fingertips do not remember the feel of his cheekbone when she lightly brushed it--they do not hum.

_///_

The first time she left as a runaway princess, crying for four hours of the ride then drinking too much vodka and turning into a sour-lemon bitch for most of the rest of it, seething over every little thing she’d experienced in the time before she left. Now, she thinks of nothing, sits straight amidst the smoke in her  cracked-leather seat, a star-crowned rail-queen flying through her thousand cities.  She could go to whichever one she wanted,  she knew. She liked it like that, was comfortable with that, one of very few things she really felt at ease about.

Six months back when the Flyer pulls into one of those tiny border towns,  _he_ sits across from her, because of course she does, and starts to talk to her in an almost-familiar drawl, because of course he does. It catches something in the back of her head and two weeks later she finds the courage to call her cousins. They hate her back home, one of them tells her, but she’s still family, says another, still the rightful bloodqueen of their tribe. The twins had ruled well in her absence, were fair and kind and all that shit, but they would step down.

 _Of course they would,_ she thought, stopping herself from saying it aloud.  That was the first night she and Link  went out, the first night she brought him home and let him see her apartment, let him see the lack of bedroom curtains and the screaming yellow restaurant sign blinking through the window until the sun broke the next morning. He tolerates the neon so well she suspects this is his norm, but he still doesn’t sleep; she decides to tolerate his clearly-broken heart in all the following hours when he freely admits that ever since his arrival, he’s wanted to go back home to Ordon. 

 _It’s never worth it_ , she tells him, almost meaning it, and later, his mouth kissing over her nipples and his fingers pressing on the inside of her, she can tell he nearly believes her.

 

///

The observation car is loud and crammed but it’s got bigger windows than her private room. Stretching far into the distance, old Twili and Sheikah shrines blink blue on starry black mountains. Infinitely stunning in the dark, undeniably decrepit during the day.

“You’d think they’d restore the walls or something,”some asshole  mutters, and if they knew even the _tiniest amount of Lorulean history_ they’d know --

“Would you like another coffee, Miss?”

Midna stares up at the car attendant as the train begins to slow for its next stop. The smoke begins to gather and settle, more noticeable than it’s been in awhile, because it’s usually nice, like green apple candy or someone unexpectedly  grabbing your hand but now---now it tastes like not talking to your mother in five years,  or crumbled, sacred dust.

“Plum tea, if you’ve still got some?” She doesn’t understand how it comes out so smoothly.  The girl smiles and nods and walks off and the train slides to a stop. It’s the last one before the border.

 “You can really see the decay in the dayti--”

“They’re not meant for the daytime,” she finally snaps across the aisle. “Look out at them now--can’t you see what they’re supposed to be?”

///

The jar is next to his foot and he sticks his fork in and glares out the window.

“I don’t know why I even _came_ here, I just--”

“Because you were miserable?”

He shoves a pickle into his mouth and crunches down. “Yeah, but it’s more...”

Midna rolls her eyes and rubs the glass with a finger. There was exactly one store in the entire city that sold pumpkin-rind pickles and ever since she knew him, he would keep some in stock for two-in-the-morning emotion-fueled vodka sessions.

“More what?”

“It’s not that easy, you know. Not that easy when you don’t have a clear reason.”

“What’s a clear reason matter, anyway? Cheating? Hating each other? Someone leaves their shoes scattered on the floor?”

“I could’ve dealt with her cheating, maybe even hating her.”

“Not her shoes? Did she have horrible taste in footwear?”

He pauses, then reaches into the jar and pulls out another pickle.

“It’s hard to explain. Everyone there tolerates shoes on the floor.”

Midna leans over and plucks the pickle out of his hand and pops it in her mouth. “I mean, it’s not like it’s different here. You’ve still got to deal with stray footwear. Or casual pickle addiction. Or--”

 “It’s not just that, it’s--” He groans. “It’s different.”

“But _how_?”

“It just _is_.”

His windows have curtains, but they’re thin and the lights still flicker through, a peculiar mix of red and blue and green and violet, onto the floor, the bed, his skin. It isn’t until now, as the train flies through Ordon station without stopping for the first time since she’s ridden it, she realizes she believes him.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> beta'ed by vaegtersang

**Author's Note:**

> Long ago, I wrote a fic called Ordona Pumpkins. I decided to pull it down to work on it, and somewhere along the way the story split into a separate modern AU. So anyway, the two stories are gonna be posted separately on here and Ao3.
> 
> Reviews and feedback are always appreciated!


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